Jumped In
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: The victories that matter are the ones you win on your own terms. South navigates a mission gone wrong. Written for the RvB Ladies' Night on Tumblr, for the prompt "teamwork."


The alarm goes off, because of-fucking-course the alarm goes off. South stares at the flashing monitor for a second, mentally tallying up the sheer volume of fuckery that's about to come crashing down on her. While she's at it, she also runs through a list of everyone who's contributed to this magical moment.

York's still in the infirmary after getting his face smashed in by New-Girl McFuck-You-Up. Because he's spending today's mission unconscious instead of annoying but marginally competent, and because Washington apparently has "other duties" that include being the Director's suck-up du jour, South's pulled lockpick duty. Normally that'd be fine, only these jackasses have set up tripwire after tripwire in their holographic locks.

Also, North is yelling orders over the comm in that tone of voice he gets when he's really starting to panic. Which is something that's much more fun to tease him about after the fact. Something that was a fuckton more fun to tease him about a couple weeks ago, before he took four bullets to the chest for her.

She's managed to get the door open, but the alarm continues to sound and her teammates continue to be fucking assholes. South draws her pistol and turns in time to see, like, fifty red dots on her HUD charging straight at her position in the server room.

"South!" Her brother's voice is cracking. "South, you need to get out of there!" A flicker of static as someone else's comm cuts in on his personal channel. Then, with an audibly shaky smile, North says, "I'm not leaving her. No way in hell."

Well, great. So fuckin' Carolina's stepping in again, trying to call the shots, which means the mission's gone to shit, which probably means another fucking drop on the leaderboard. North's currently positioned on a sniper perch about a quarter-mile up the road from this facility, which makes him basically less than useless (so what else is new). The rest of the team's still on approach in a Pelican, their arrival delayed by a patrolling squad of fighters that just happened to get lucky and spot them. It's been a complete clusterfuck, a real Project Freelancer special.

So South's stuck standing with her dick in her hand, waiting to be slaughtered by dozens of highly armed assholes, and there's no backup to be seen. Fucking _great_.

The door behind her finally opens. South's already moving.

First guy's got a shottie, some standard-issue M90, but the woman pushing into the room beside him and bellowing "Freeze! Don't fucking move!" has what looks like a modded M45E, which is pretty fucking nice.

South comes in low, chucking her pistol into the air partly as a distraction and partly to free up her hands, and grabs the M45E out of the startled guard's hands before she can react. By the time the pistol lands back in her hand, South's taken out the first two guards with an armored stomp to the instep and two quick 8-gauge shells to the face.

The narrow doorway—the sole point of access—is doing a pretty great job of funneling the attacking assholes into a single-file line, and South drops the shotgun in favor of picking them off one by one with her pistol. They figure out eventually that they've created the world's goriest shooting gallery and retreat up the hall. South grins. Okay. Fifty assholes is a problem. Fifty poorly trained assholes? Not so much.

"I think I got this," she says, which is, of course, when somebody who didn't get the memo about all the expensive computer equipment in the next room has the bright idea to throw a grenade at her.

Time slows down. Like, not the way it does for Carolina's fancy-ass armor enhancement, but in the purely panicked fuck-everything-about-this sense that's the brain's way of clinging to its last few moments of life. South half-turns, hears North scream something in her ear, and then the whole fucking world crashes down around her.

She doesn't pass out. She wishes, fervently, that she would.

The blast crumples one wall of the server room, sends razor-sharp shards of shrapnel through her armor, and South stumbles against the wall, lets the heaviness of her limbs drag her down to the floor. She's instantly blinded and deafened, senses eclipsed by the pain. It fucking hurts. Everything fucking hurts, but she's already sinking into numbing shock, shaking and shivering in her armor as she curls in on herself.

The ringing in her ears fades enough for her to hear North's voice, tinny and still shouting, like he's a billion miles away. For a second, she's there with him. For a second, they're back on Earth. She's bitten off more than she can chew, pickpocketed some dickbiscuit with burly friends who have no compunctions about beating the shit out of a scrawny teenager. She's on the ground, half-conscious, snarling insults to try to get them to kick her in the head, 'cause they usually stop once they've actually knocked you out, and at this point a concussion's probably gonna be less of a problem than the ribs they're trying to smash into paste. North's yelling her name. North's always fucking yelling her name.

Someone releases the seals on her helmet. She spits inaccurately into the too-bright room, watches with some satisfaction as her eyes finally focus on a guard with bloody spittle running down his visor. He hooks a hand under the armor at her shoulder, drags her half-upright to peer more closely at her. South can't keep her head up, lets it slump down until her chin is touching her chestplate. Fucking _hurts_. "Yeah," he says. "Still alive. Who the fuck are these guys?"

Another guard moves up, hesitant. South bares her teeth at him, and he flinches. "That hair doesn't look regulation."

The first guard shakes South so her head lolls to the side. "So I'll say it again: _who the fuck are these guys_?"

A new voice, warm and faintly amused. "Not your problem anymore."

The guard's head _disappears_.

South recoils, adrenaline and the sharp smell of blood and gunpowder pushing past the numbness creeping up her limbs. She hits the wall behind her with a bang, watches as the figures in the room start to turn away from her.

Texas moves _fast_. She's borrowed a shotgun somewhere, too, but like South she abandons it to free up her hands. South notices, in a dazed sort of way, that up close Texas isn't a particularly tall person, even in armor. Carolina works around the height problem through the clever use of leverage, bringing her opponents' momentum to bear against them. Connie uses knives and speed as her levelers. South herself prefers big guns.

Texas just apparently doesn't give a fuck. She picks up a guy who must have almost a foot of height and a hundred pounds of mass on her, suplexes him into the floor. She whips around with a haymaker that floors the next attacker. She's a brawler, inelegant but supremely confident. She moves like someone a hell of a lot bigger.

South sinks back to the floor, back to the wall, breathing hard against the sound of bones snapping and armor hitting armor, feet shuffling on concrete. Her head hurts, so she lets it sink back, stares up at the ceiling. Someone yells in pain. It's a strange, distant background noise. Faraway.

She's back on Earth, long time ago. Her brother's not screaming her name, not this time. He's a small, skinny figure curled in on himself on the living room floor, staring in shock at his hands clasped over his gut, at the blood coursing over his fingers. Saving him is the first time she kills someone, his ragged breathing too-loud in her ears, the first time she takes a knife from someone's hand and plunges it back into its owner's throat. It feels good, after so many years of waiting.

After, she drags her brother to a hospital, leaves him there in the muffled noise of too-caring, of too-worried, of too-safe. Doesn't see him for nearly two years while he pings around from foster home to foster home, while she picks enough fights to get noticed by the right people. She comes back for him, eventually, jumps him into the gang herself, ignores his perpetual worried frown, his new tendency to put himself between her and danger, like he's trying to make up for something, like he's trying to make up for everything. They're a team. They work well together. They're a team.

"Hey," says Texas, and slaps a gloved hand none-too-gently against South's cheek. "Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Get up, we gotta move."

South looks up, vision blurring. There are a lot of bodies on the floor. Tex's armor is slicked with blood. She thinks of the guard's last words, _who the fuck are these guys_.

"Dammit," Texas says, and yanks off South's warped chestplate. South blinks heavily, stares down at the jagged wound slashed into her chest by shrapnel, through her bodysuit, through skin and muscle into bone. Blood is still streaming from the gash, pooling into her armor, the flow sluggish where the armor's inadequate auto-injection of biofoam has taken hold.

"We need medical," Texas is saying. "We need evac, now." A pause, a new edge to her voice. "In my opinion, sir, this does not constitute an acceptable loss. It isn't necessary. 479er is two minutes out. The risk is minimal. We don't leave people behind." She flinches; South feels it in the hand applying pressure to the wound in her chest. "No, sir." Then: "Thank you, sir."

South lets her head loll to one side again, feels the rest of her body following suit. Texas, with surprising gentleness, lowers her to the ground more carefully. "Hey," South says, her voice slurring. "Why the fuck are you here?"

A smile, audible behind the helmet. "I'm Plan B. Picking up the pieces when you assholes fuck up." She raises a hand, holds up the flash drive that's supposed to be South's fucking mission. Fuck. Another fucking spot on the leaderboard.

She wants nothing better than to kick that smile off Tex's face. Darkness flickers at the corners of her vision. "Thought Plan B was 'Lina's job."

"Sometimes she fucks up, too." There's a weird, teasing warmth to the words, like she's poking fun at some little sibling taking life too seriously. Like it doesn't matter, not really. It's worse than Florida's creepy cheerfulness, 'cause at least his is so over-the-top it's gotta be an act. This is someone so confident and competent she just doesn't give a fuck about the drama. Completely, cheerfully oblivious to the shit that's going on behind the scenes. Great.

"You're pretty fucked up," South says, groggily. "Good fighter, but there's something wrong with you."

"Guess I'll fit right in," Tex says, then pauses. "Your brother's yelling a lot. Think you maybe scared him."

South sighs, watches dark spots flare and widen in her vision. There's blood in her mouth again. "He does that. Thinks he's helping."

Tex snorts, but there's a weird undertone to her voice, a serious note that wasn't there a second ago. "They always do." She's quiet for a moment, then adds, "Hey, you can pass out now, in case you were wondering. Help's on the way."

South thinks about lying on the ground in some shitty back-alley, about taunting the bigger, stronger assholes until they finally knock her out. About North pushing her out of harm's way, about the goddamn leaderboard. About Tex, about all she fucking represents.

She thinks about taking the victories she can, on her terms.

"Fuck you," South says, and sinks into darkness.


End file.
